SINGAPORE'S restaurants did not lose their crowds and queues this downturn, but their customers were less satisfied this year than they were a year back.

Restaurants scored 65.8 on the latest Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) - a 1.5 point drop from last year. This compared with the overall food and beverage sector's score of 65, which held up well against last year's 65.4.

Caroline Lim, director of the Institute of Service Excellence (ISES) at SMU, which conducted the study, said the drop for restaurants was despite improvements in their ratings of overall quality and perceived value.

'The dip in overall satisfaction is largely because restaurants, on the whole, are not delivering what customers want,' she said. 'It is important for businesses to understand customer needs and deliver to meet those needs and wants.'

Still, two restaurant groups defied the sectoral decline to notch improvements in their scores. Apex-Pal, which owns a stable of restaurant brands including the Sakae Sushi chain, saw its score rise 1.2 points to 66.4, while Crystal Jade improved 1.6 points to 66.7.

Apex-Pal chief executive Douglas Foo said: 'I think the improvement in our customer satisfaction standards is really due to the consistent, continual training and innovation put in place, which is all starting to show results now.'

To ensure food quality, Apex-Pal goes to considerable lengths - as far as tracing the toxin levels of water from which the fish is sourced - and regularly sends food samples from its kitchen for bacterial lab tests. It also adds vitamin E to the rice it serves.

Apex-Pal's service philosophy is to 'serve only what we would eat, treat people as we would want to be treated', Mr Foo said.

Crystal Jade's Stella To, special assistant to its managing director, said: 'Crystal Jade has further strengthened its internal service training programme in terms of service skills and language enhancement.'

But customer expectations rise, and the quality of food and service will have to rise in tandem to maintain customer satisfaction.

Ms To said: 'As Singapore is a developed country with international exposure, customers tend to be more and more demanding. Being a service provider, we have to go one step further to ensure customer satisfaction.'

Crystal Jade ensures its staff are committed to providing an 'excellent dining experience for all customers'. To do that, it needs to equip staff with good product knowledge as well as service skills, Ms To said. Good restaurant service staff are also encouraged with awards, she said.

Mr Foo said: 'An index like CSISG does help to enforce what we're doing, and offer suggestions as to areas we can look into more.'

He hopes the index will be a good indicator of Singapore's service standards on a global level, and thinks this will be useful to Apex-Pal, since it hopes to make Sakae Sushi a global brand.

The fast-food brands in Singapore are undeniably strong global ones already, which could be a factor in their resilient service quality standards and customer satisfaction levels.

Fast-food restaurants kept their score up at 64.2, just 0.2 points shy of last year's 64.4. But performance was not uniform. Pizza Hut and KFC saw a 2.4 point drop to 62.9, while Burger King lost 1.1 points to score 63.6.

The exception was McDonald's. 'The overall satisfaction of McDonald's restaurants has improved significantly because they have also done particularly well in overall quality,' said ISES's Ms Lim. 'In the latest results, customers are more satisfied and they also say McDonald's is meeting their expectations.'

Linda Ming, communications director of McDonald's Restaurants Singapore, said: 'Despite the challenging economic times, we have continued to focus on service excellence and invested in efforts to continually improve our service standards.'

This has meant investing in training and development opportunities for its employees, she said. 'We keep our work place fun and engaging for our people at all times. This is because we know that being inspired and motivated every day is critical to delivering a memorable dining experience to our customers.'

The CSISG study seeks to re-align the traditional definition of service excellence as simply exceeding customer expectations, to one that sees excellent service as understanding target customers, setting clear expectations of value offered, and consistently delivering what is promised.

McDonald's sees this as much in line with what it does. 'We have always undertaken such a holistic approach towards customer service and have constantly evolved over the years along with our customers' needs,' Ms Ming said.

The CSISG study also found that McDonald's customers, as with those of most other F&B players, are typically ones whose satisfaction is affected highly by quality and minimally by value.